Category Archives: New Media

Style guides like this show up with every new mode of exchange, but they are often worth looking at – just to see how users view the mode.

The Anatomy of a Tweet: Twitter Gets a Style Guide – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
The bulk of the book, titled “140 Characters, A Style Guide for the Short Form,” will revolve around eight key lessons from the Twitter universe, such as the importance of simplicity, honesty and humor. The project will also highlight notable figures worth following on Twitter, anecdotes from the community and even examples of the few occasions Twitterers have gone overboard: For example, Mr. Sagolla points to “bathroom tweets,” or messages about bodily functions, as falling into the category of things not to post to Twitter.

“This is a new genre of writing,” said Mr. Sagolla. “A new form of literature, in some ways.”

ArsTechnica has some early observations about the redesign (visual and content) of the Whithouse.gov website – which also includes a blog. Of course the new adminstration is going to visually redesign the site to differentiate it from the outgoing admin. But ArsTechnica notes that there are content changes, and a change in the rhetorical stance towards readers. The new site encourages participation and feedback:

Participation is also a focus of the new site, and Obama’s administration will be publishing all “non-emergency legislation” for five days and soliciting feedback from the public before Obama signs it. The closest thing to a “beta” label is the request for feedback on what other features visitors would like to see at the WhiteHouse.gov site.

And this is a real kicker. The new site has reduced the robots.txt file to a minumum. The robots.txt file block or allow search engines to index a site so content on it can be readily found. The old file blocked hundreds of index spiders. The new site seems to block … 0. Kottke.com writes about the details.